ASHM Report Back

Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.

Young, Deadly and Syphilis free is an aspect if the Young Deadly and Free campaign focused on improving STI infection rates amongst young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote Australian communities. The outcomes are to:

Increase age specific syphilis testing among young people in remote communities affected by the syphilis outbreak

Increase awareness and understanding of syphilis, its transmission, testing and outcomes among young people

Improve awareness of the syphilis outbreak among clinicians and understandings of syphilis testing for remote clinicians

The components of the campaign include a media strategy involving television commercials, radio advertisements and other media; supporting posters and multi-media education materials; a social media campaign for peer to peer delivery of key messages about syphilis, and; a health service engagement strategy towards testing promotion. The media strategy also includes messaging local languages and Kriol.

Using analytics for Facebook, the platform where the majority of resource sharing is taking place, it is apparent that the videos developed for the campaign are having the most reach. This is followed by image-based resources. It is difficult to measure the extent of links being shared as Facebook's analytics do not prioritise accounting for these. Instagram is being used although currently the account only has 54 followers.

Moving forward, the campaign is investigating the use of online ambassadors who would be paid to guide others in their social networks towards information.

To develop the literacy capabilities of clinical service providers, an electronic newsletter sent via email is sent fortnightly to over 350 health service staff. These act as reminders about campaign services, the outcomes of the campaign, key messages and stories from health services highlighting strategies for testing On average, about 38% of these are opened which is on par with other forms of electronic newsletter clinicians may receive. .